Greetings my fellow peeps and peepettes. This is Gareth, husband to SocalMom. But you can call me Sir.
After many years idling in the background, I have finally been honored with the opportunity to post on here.
I can’t mess this up. So, no bad language or inappropriate innuendo allowed, just intellectual witicisms. Dunno if I can do that. Oh well.
The End.
…….. Gareth.
Uh, for my inaugural post, I am in Wimbledon, on Court Number 1.
But first some background. The only reason I am in Britain at all is because of Wimbledon.
But this post wouldn’t be as entertaining if I didn’t tell you all (I have lots of fans) of the lead-up to my Wimbledon trip. And you know what ? Everything in this post you are about to read is travel-related, which is what Donna’s blog is all about. How thoughtful of that is me !! Um …. how thoughtful of me is that ?
It all started the day before, last Sunday. That day, I went on a delightful hike with my brother in the Brecon Beacons. He drove to go hiking, so I had to go back to his house after to get my car.
That’s where the fun started. Driving off, I heard thump-thump-thump-thump-thump from the car. Thinking that it would be a good idea to pull over and check what was happening, I did just that – aren’t I smart ? (And a man too. Just don’t tell me to ask for directions or read the instructions.) Well, the front-left tire had blown out. And it was 2:45pm on a Sunday in Britain, a time at which most places are shut.
I’d only driven a few hundred yards down the road and so I walked back to my brother’s house to see what options I had. Kwik Fit, he said, was open until 4pm. Great. Get the spare tire on the car and I’m off.
Not so simple though. Loosening the nuts on the wheel was easy enough, as was getting the jack under the car. But the makers of the car hadn’t figured that in most cases, there wasn’t enough clearance under the car to rotate the long swivelly thing round and round and raise up the car.
Being an innovative person, I called AA (the British equivalent of AAA in the US) and they were there in 10 minutes with their industrial-strength hydraulic jack. The wheel was replaced with the small spare in a short time (but not that short such that I had time to listen to the guy tell me how he was in Alberta for two weeks last week after he asked me where *I* was from).
So off I went to Kwik Fit at less than 50 miles an hour, per the AA guy’s instructions. That was hard work because I do happen to have a bit of lead foot, as various sheriffs and highway patrol officers from San Luis Obispo County, Kern County, Ventura County and Los Angeles County will confirm.
Kwik Fit must have been waiting for me because when I pulled up, two of them came running to see what I wanted. (I should have answered that one with “quarter pounder with cheese, please”.) Well, I told them that my tire was in the boot (that’s what they call the trunk over here, dear readers) and I needed it repaired. No problem they said and took my keys.
I went into the waiting room and sat down waiting for the repair to be done and for the kind gentlemen to bid me farewell.
Well if things happened that way, I wouldn’t be writing this post now would I ! Anyone guess that this was the part of the story where things started to go badly wrong ? Do I hear a “yes” from anyone ? Well, this was the bit where things started to go wrong !!
So, the guy came and said they’d got the car up on the jacks and I might want to come and take a look. Fearing the worst, I made my way outside.
First off, he told me that the tire that had blown out had to be replaced. The side wall was toast. I took a deep breath and said “fine, replace it”. Then, he pointed out that the rear-left tire had a bad gash in both the side-wall and the tread. In the side-wall, the steel belt was waving at me.
Not good.
The guy asked me if I was traveling far and, if so, that tire should be replaced beforehand because, of course, repair was out of the question. Well, let me check that one. The big reason I’d come over to Britain this summer was because I’d got Wimbledon tickets. Donna, Megan and I had all planned to come over until gas prices started to explode and my business got very very shaky due to the residential housing market that has nose-dived. I wasn’t about to give up my Wimbledon tickets so we decided that I would come over alone for two weeks. Not the best plan in the world, but getting the tickets was hard enough given that I had to go through a lottery to get them. So the guy at Kwit Fit had asked me where I was headed. Wimbledon was the next day and I needed to leave early (8am) in the morning to get to Wimbledon, fight the traffic close to Wimbledon, have enough time to walk around, have lunch and then be in our seats by 1pm when play starts on Court Number 1. Plus, my Mum was coming with me and it wouldn’t be good form to have a tire blow out doing 70 mph (or more, maybe) on the motorway.
But wait, there’s more.
Each tire on the damn Avis-we-suck-real-bad rental car cost $320 to replace. What’s 2 times $320 ? Yes, $640. No way was I shelling out 640 green drinking vouchers, so my mind (large) went into overdrive to come up with options. Realizing I had to pay *some* money, I decided to replace the front tire and wait on the rear one. And at the same time I asked the kind service person if I could use his phone to make a collect call to American Express in the US. This was because each time we use rental cars in Britain, we decline all the crap insurance coverages they try and stick us with because we are covered by Amex. Sweet ! I just wanted to confirm that because I wanted to fix the rear tire as well while I was at it, but didn’t want to get caught out if for some reason tires were excluded from coverage.
Anyway, I got connected with Amex and, after getting transferred three times and having to repeat my details and problem each time, I was talking to someone who said she could help. Well, by “help”, that was code for “I’ll tell you what Amex will do for you in your special case, which is nothing”. She told me that Amex would help if I was stuck on the side of the road in the US, but because I am in Britain I was stuffed. And by the way, she said, I wasn’t covered at all by them when renting cars in Britain.
What ? “Au contrair” I responded. But she trotted out the same stuff again. So I hung up with her and promptly told the guy that we were stopping at replacement of one tire.
At that point, I started calling SocalMom, Donna and my wife (all the same person, just like Clark Kent and Superman, and never in the same place at once). But since it was 7:15am on a Sunday morning in California and she was deep in the land of nod, there was no answer on either her phone or the home phone.
Well, at this point dear reader, I was beside myself. There I was driving back to my Mum’s with one fixed $320 tire one the front and a definitely dickey tire still on the back with no resolution in sight.
Eventually (1 hour later) Donna called me back. “Were you trying to call me an hour ago ?”, she said. “Uh, yes”, I said. (What was the first clue ? Multiple missed calls on her cell phone and the home phone, and then a couple of texts ? Ouch.) So I went through everything I’d been through that day, culminating with the question (hoping it was rhetorical): “We’re covered insurance-wise for cars in Britain, right ?”. “Of course”, she said, but agreed she would check with Amex at her end.
A short while later, Donna called me back again. Guess what’s coming up. Yes, Mr. Mills, is not covered for anything related to cars in Britain. So Mr. Mills is totally responsible for any damage whatsoever to the rental car he was driving, and, should a farmer t-bone Mr. Mills in his tractor down some leafy green lane, then Mr. Mills is 100% shafted and will have to pay all defense, personal injury and physical damage claims and costs out of his own (small) pocket.
Exsqueeze me ?
Yes, that’s it. I was stuffed and shafted all at the same time.
Well, at that point, I wasn’t in the best of moods. I had a buggered car that needed fixing before Wimbledon in the morning, and, even if it was fixed, I wasn’t insured anyway.
What’s a good-looking Brit and American (dual national, thank you) to do ? Well, my normal mode of operation in emergencies is to get things fixed first in whatever manner works, and then count the bodies afterwards. Well, while maybe that’s a good way of doing things in the office, it’s not with the wife. While I got major and immediate action out of Donna, the result was that she got very upset and thought she’d ruined the trip for me. Donna’s very empathetic and blames herself first in all situations. For example, and I digress (once more), if she stubs her toe on a table leg, *she* says “sorry”. I felt bad and started to think about ways to fix things with her.
I added that to my, “Things That Didn’t Go As Expected Today” list, and put it next to my Simon & Garfunkel record, “50 Ways to Piss Off Your Lover” CD. (Like how I juxtaposed “record” and “CD” in the same sentence ?)
** Public Service Announcement: This is the end of the heartfelt part of this blog post. **
So anyway, Donna called me back again (11th time) to report that we WERE covered by Amex for rental cars in Britain, but only if our primary insurance company covered us first.
Oh joy ! Uh ……. no. Our primary insurance company doesn’t cover jack in Britain. Or Gareth for that matter.
The 12th call from Donna was to report that Amex had a plan that you could pay $18 additional each time you rent a car for primary insurance coverage on rentals and it would apply in Britain. Great ! Do it Donna ! She did, but it only applied to new rentals. That meant that I had to get a new car for the Amex insurance to kick in. Well, this morsel of news came through at 8pm my time. Britain is shut down on Sundays and is dead by 5pm, so there was no chance of arranging for a new car rental then.
I’d have to wait ‘til morning. Sounds like a song, lover.
But there was still stuff to do prior to the morning. In order for my Mum to come with me to Wimbledon, we have to put the dog (Jess, 15 years old, very bloody old, and with dodgy everything – can’t see/hear/walk) in kennels. The kennels are in Gwaelod-y-Garth which is near Castell Coch, about 15 miles away right at the end of a narrow and bumpy country road. Great ! Just what I need with a buggered tire on the back.
So I get back to my Mum’s house and together we (ok, I) stuff the dog in the back seat.
Now there’s a digression (again) here. A couple of days prior, we had taken the dog to the vet, also in the car. The dog doesn’t have the best constitution and promptly proceeded to barf all over the back seat of my rental car. It was about an hour and a half from the point of barfing to getting back to my Mum’s where I could clean up the doggy barf, which was a nice amount of time for the stains in the car seat fabric to become permanent. When I did get back to my Mum’s, I cleaned up the hurl and did a good job in getting rid of any stains. The only problem was that the paper towel I used to rub the car seat fabric came off on the fabric, leaving little tiny white specs all over the former barf locale. No problem, I thought, deal with it later. Oh yes, and the dog molts and had left a fur coat all over the place.
End of digression.
My Mum insists on sitting there with the dog. But we learnt our lesson with dog upchucking, so we layered the back seat with black plastic bags as insurance.
As we got off the motorway towards Gwaelod-y-Garth, my Mum announces that the dog has barfed all over her and the back seat !
Big surprise. My mum is collateral damage and my back seat is covered, so no problem.
Wrong.
The dog, Jess, had moved all the black bags in her state of agitation, exposing a new, fresh and unsoiled portion of back seat car fabric. Again, no problem. Getting back to my brother’s house (we’d been invited to dinner), I clean up the hughie, and get more white paper specs on more of the back seat. (I’m a man and do not learn from past mistakes.)
By this time, it’s 6pm, I’m buggered, hungry and utterly pissed off. But like any good manager, I take stock of the situation and figure: a) take back car rental to Avis in the morning and hope they don’t see the white-speckled and dog barf-stained portion of the back seat; b) walk 20 mins to Enterprise down the road from Avis and get a new rental; c) drink wine to forget about current problems.
Option c) worked well, but then I figured that I should work some more on the stain part of the back seat. So a trip to Tesco Extra to buy some cleaner and (more) paper towels and hard work to dry the back seat with my sister-in-law’s hair dryer.
Stain all gone. I da Oxy-Clean MAN !! (Paging Billy Mays.) Then I used packing tape to rid the car of the freaking dog hair.
So, stain-free and hair-free (but still white speckeled) back seat. Again no problem, worry about it in the morning.
The morning came and I was up bright and early. The Avis place didn’t open until 8am, but I figured I’d go early just in case. Well, I was there at 7:15am and so were they. Could they take my car even though they weren’t open yet ? “No problem, sir”. That’s the spirit, not like the London Avis reps with the recessive genes. Did they notice any sick stains or white specs on the back seat ? Heck no !!
A great start to the day.
So off I walked to Enterprise. I got there at 7:40am. Like Avis, they didn’t open until 8am but they were very nice and said I could wait inside.
Inside were 6 guys. All typing “important stuff” on their computers. I was standing at the counter looking at them, right next to the sign that says “Customer Service is Our Priority”. At 8am, one of them ambled over and asked if he could help me. I said I wanted to rent a car. Big surprise. Again, another opportunity for my “quarter pounder with cheese, please” line. My “The Office” script will be ready for production shortly.
Anyway, the guy says he has no cars available. Oops. My pea brain (large) hadn’t considered this one. Thinking on my feet (that’s what I do in a crisis), I asked (sarcastically) if Enterprise had any other branches in Cardiff. “Of course, sir”, was the answer. “Well”, I said, “could you call and see if they have any cars available ?”. He did and they didn’t. Was there any other car rental place ? Yes, Eurocar down the road I was informed. On the way to Eurocar I found Budget place (no cars) and a Ford place (no cars). I walked into Eurocar and started to open my mouth, but, no cars. “Go to Days Rental across the road, sir”, the cheery young lady suggested. Game for a laugh, I ambled across the road, now having walked miles, and enquired as to the availability of immediate motorized transport. “Yes sir, not a problem sir, which car would you like sir”, I was asked as the gentlemen waved towards the parking lot. Only wanting something with four wheels and a motor at this point, I chose the car closest to the door.
“Driver’s license sir ?”. No problem. “Passport, sir?“ Passport ?
Now, yet another digression is needed here.
When I come to Britain, I use my British and American passports and respective drivers licenses interchangeably, depending on the situation and how I can derive the most benefit. The problem at the Days place was that I had my California Drivers License, only.
Always looking on the bright side of life, I muttered something bad and got a taxi ($40) back to my Mum’s house, and started to call around for a car. Finally, I got one at National, only a 20-minute walk away.
Eventually, at 10am, me, my Mum and I set sail for Wimbledon, my heart racing at a 1,000 beats per second, not having calmed down from the excitement of the last few days.
So we went to Wimbledon and had a good time.
Hah ! Did that scare you that I title the post “Wimbledon” and then not talk about Wimbledon ?
Well, we got to London in about 2 hours. Then it took 45 minutes to work our way over to Car Park 10 which is conveniently located 5 minutes walk from the tennis. I was booked in advance (Brain Surgeon) and so we were ushered right in.
We got to Wimbledon at around 12:45pm, and play started at 1pm. Knowing that there were three matches planned and that play would go at least until 6pm, I elected to walk around a little first and see stuff. Here are a few views of what I saw:
There are scoreboards all over the grounds that are regularly updated by little men on ladders.
Outside Court Number 1 is a monster TV that is watched by others on the adjacent mound (called Aorangi Terrace).
We got to our seats at 2pm. Here’s the view.
Three matches were planned on Court Number 1. This was the first of them, between Nicole Vaidisova of Czechoslovakia and Anna Chakvetadze of Russia. Here, Chakvetadze was already one set up and 5-4 up in the second. Rather routine, and she went on to win in straight sets.
Anna Chakvetadze of Russia (on the left) and Nicole Vaidisova of Czechoslovakia (on the right).
It was interesting to see how fast the players could serve. The women here were around 100mph, whereas the men we saw later on clocked in at around 130mph.
Every time the players changed ends, the ushers who guarded each point of entry to the court and two of the ball-boys/girls stood like this. Are they like the Secret Service ready to take a bullet for the pres should some crazed nutter come storming onto the court ?
Mikhail Youzny of Russia versus Rafael Nadal of Spain was the second match we saw. This was quite something. Not for the competitiveness of the play necessarily, but for how Nadal totally overwhelmed his opponent. While we were 
watching this, we kept hearing roars from Centre Court which, as we later found out, was Andy Murray of Britain doing a remarkable come-back from two sets down to win in five against Richard Gasquet of France, the number 8 seed. (I later watched that match and it was clear that Murray won because of the mistakes that Gasquet made at crucial moments, rather than any skill that Murray displayed. Murray won his match in a much different way than Nadal and the two went through to play each other in the next round. My prediction was that Nadal would thump Murray, which he did on Wednesday.)
Anyway, here are some of the pictures from their match.
The coin toss between Youzny and Nadal.
It was at this point very early in the match that Nadal thought he pulled a muscle, and requested a “medical time-out”. What a nance !
Nadal puts away an overhead.
This was what I found interesting. The large pool of photographers were only taking pictures of Nadal. If he changed ends, then the photographers lenses pointed the other way. If I were Youzny, I’d be getting a complex.
End of story. Nadal thumps Youzhny in straight sets.
Well the third and final match of the night was an afterthought. It was good and went to four sets, but after having watched Nadal in action, these guys were just going through the motions for one of them to win this match only to be knocked out in the next round. Not the same quality, but enjoyable nonetheless. Hey, it’s Wimbledon and it’s all good.
So that was Wimbledon 2008 up front and personal. My Mum and I left the grounds at 8:45pm for Car Park Number 10 just down the road after having spent 7¾ hours there. Not bad for a Wimbledon virgin.
We didn’t drive back to Cardiff that night (in Wales and where I grew up) because I had figured beforehand that the tennis would probably last a long time and we’d be tired. So I got us some rooms at The Hare and Hounds Hotel in Speen, about an hours drive away. This was a place that Donna and I had found by accident a few years ago – on a prior trip, there was the equivalent of a sig alert on the M4 motorway that we use to get from London to Cardiff. We spent hours on a stretch of road that should have taken us 30 minutes to drive. After we emerged from the mess, we agreed to stay at the first bed and breakfast that we found. The Hare and the Hounds Hotel was it. We got there, I had two pints of Stella Atrois, a big meal, a great sleep and a dynamic breakfast in the morning and all was right with the world in my mind. Donna thinks it’s ok but it’s my hotel of choice now. So that’s where my Mum and I headed.
So, being the thoughtful kind of chap that I am, I called ahead to the hotel (really a bed and breakfast) and told them we’d be arriving just after 10pm. “No problem”, they said, “but the cook goes home at 9pm”. “Well”, I said, “Pray tell what food offerings do you have after said cook departs your hostelry ?”, “None, sir, just crisps”. Oh well, I thought. After all I’d been through with the car stuff in the last few days, getting over this little hurdle that had been sent my way would be easy to overcome.
And it was. We got to Speen, and overcame a slight hurdle when the owner tried to put us in the same room. My mother is deaf as a post and when the hotel man (think of a bald Basil Fawlty) was making bright and breezy chat to my mum by telling her that they would find her a small cupboard down in the basement, she thought he was serious. My mother had a worried look on her face, not hearing much of what he’d been saying, but hearing enough to get worried, but the look on the guys face was priceless. I just shut up and let the scene play out. Bad son.
Anyway we found our rooms, which ended up being next to each other, and then went down the road to Newbury where we found a very nice Italian restaurant. I got a Four Seasons Pizza and my Mum got a salad and garlic bread. We took it back to the hotel and ate it in my room. I got the obligatory two pints of Stella and downed them in record quick time. Again, all was right with the world.
Until the morning, that is.
Upon bidding my mother good night, we had agreed that I would phone her room at 8am and we’d go down for breakfast. Well, I did call her only to find her all in a tizzy. Now, you have to be informed that my mother is a rather particular person and, prior to her going to bed, she had decided to double-check that the key worked in the lock and that the door was locked properly. So when I called her, she was all in a tizzy because she was convinced she had locked herself in and couldn’t get out. “Gareth”, she said, “the instructions on the door say dial zero in an emergency, I think I need to do that”. In a minute, she was out of her room after I pushed the door a little from the other side.
Anyway, the rest of the morning was great. We had a good breakfast and made it back to Cardiff in record time.
Wimbledon was over and I could finally relax.
Well, not quite. We still had to get the dog from the kennels. Ok. I was prepared. This time, there was no freaking way that the damn thing was going to hurl over MY car. So I prepared the trunk – I turned over the trunk liner and then covered it all with newspaper. Even if the dog *did* decide to heave, then no problem.
So we went and got the dog and drove back home. All the way I was going slowly and not making sharp turns. If the dog had a delicate stomach, I didn’t want its contents going anywhere. Success !! We made it home without so much as a burp or a fart from the dog. Feeling triumphant, I went around the back of the car and opened the door to let the dog out. No barf was evident. However, there was a huge wet patch on the left side of the trunk. Yes, the dog had now pissed/peeded/done a jimmy riddle/wizzed/slashed all over the floor of the trunk.
Well, if a urine-covered trunk floor was all that was between me and a few glasses of wine, then I could deal with it, which I did.
So, I hope you enjoyed my tale of rental cars, Wimbledon, and the dog. Sorry to have to say that’s it for now.
……. Rule Britannia, Praise the Lord, and Don’t Mess with Texas ……. Gareth.
P.S. The above is a good post. All future ones are $10 per paragraph, each paragraph not to exceed one screen in 12-pint Times Roman.
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